March 25, 2008

Marketing U

DOTAC (Daughter of the Ad Contrarian) is going to college in September, which means we went shopping for colleges this year.

The best visit we had, and the school DOTAC fell in love with, followed some universal principles of marketing.

First, they treated the customer right. When we arrived, they had DOTAC's schedule for the visit clearly and personally printed for her. She knew exactly what she was going to do and when she was going to do it.

Next, they had the best salesman make the pitch. The info session was conducted by the Dean of Admissions, not a student or an underling. He was articulate, he was knowledgeable, and he was credible.

Finally, the school clearly differentiated itself : here's how we do things and here's why. We know it's different, but there's a reason for it.

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans.""As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."